Retaining old brand traffic after a rebrand
-
Hi,
How would you retain the organic search traffic for your old brand after a full rebrand? Website redesign, new company name, new domain name etc
If we change from blahservices.com to fooservices.com and do all the things you would for a regular domain migration, will Google still return pages from the new brand fooservices.com when a user searches for old brand "blah services keyword"?
We will be doing the following to try and not lose organic search traffic for our old brand:
Keep PPC running on our old brand name keywords
Mention our old brand on the new website in the footer i.e. "Copyright blah services trading as foo services"
Publish a press release about the rebrand on our blog
Say something like "blah services has rebranded as foo services" in meta descriptions for a while
Put old and new brands in meta title for a while
Keep 301 redirects from old domain in place foreverIs there anything else you would add to that?
Thanks,
K
-
Thanks Nick,
We're happy to mention the old brand on the new site and will be talking about the rebrand on the new site.
Agree leaving the old brand in the meta title for some time will help. We're also planning on mentioning old and new brands in the meta description so users can easily see we are the same company.
-
Thanks Egol,
Google forgetting our old brand over time is what we thought might happen.
The amount of brand traffic we have is indeed significant and we want to retain as much of it as poss. I know there's more to be had with the rebrand but that's an unknown quantity and not concrete enough to not worry about old brand traffic.
We're in the UK and the old brand will be the parent company. Plus we're a limited company so we're required by law to say something like "blah services ltd trading as foo services" on our site.
So we can add something along the lines of "Copyright blah services ltd trading as foo services all rights reserved" in the footer of all pages.
And we'll host a PR about the rebrand on our blog and mention the history in our About page.
But to clarify, can we assume that over time traffic for the old brand will diminish.. particularly if we don't mention the old brand on the new site? Just want to manage expectations.
-
If the previous site had a fair amount of authority and you 301 redirect it appropriately to the new site it likely will maintain its rankings for the previous brand term. This will be from the amount of anchor links with the previous branded term within it ie brad or brand.com.
Alternatively, you can do a couple other items to optimize the new site for the old branded term. For instance, optimize the title tag of the new site to read something similar to "Nicks Pizza and Sandwiches - formally Nicks Burger Spot"
Of course this is assuming you want your new sites associated with your old brand. If that's not the case then you'll want to do a lot of brand reputation management to bury mentioned of the previous brand and to dissasociate your new site.
-
So will Google still return our new domain for searches related to our old brand?
If your new site has no traces of your old brand then search engines will forget about your old brand over time. Off-site links that hold the name of your old brand as anchor text can keep this alive but not as strongly as if the old brand had an visible presence on your site.
I don't know how much branded traffic you had in the past. If it was significant you might want to include a mention of your old brand on each page of your new site, or have a history page, optimized for your old brand that can compete in the SERPs when someone searches for your old brand. For this to work well, your old brand would need to be a distinct name that does not have a lot of competition.
-
Hi Egol,
Yes the new website will be a big improvement on usability and we'll be doing lots of great PR to get the new name out there and we're excited about all the new traffic and increased engagement that will bring.
However, current branded traffic accounts for a significant chunk of revenue and we don't want to lose this traffic if possible
So will Google still return our new domain for searches related to our old brand?
Or should we right off traffic for our old brand and focus on new traffic for the new brand?
We accept there might be a temporary traffic dip but we're ok with that if traffic returns back to previous levels after google has picked up the domain change.
Can we still expect to get traffic for our old brand once things have settled though?
The PPC is more about bidding on our old brand keywords so we still retain some of that traffic. The PR is for raising awareness for our new brand and will bring lots of lovely new traffic, hopefully.
But ultimately we want to retain the traffic for our old brand while generating new traffic for our new brand
Is that too greedy?
-
Honestly, if you don’t want to lose your current traffic shift it to new domain, I am not saying it’s not possible but you will see a dip (maybe temporary) but there will be a dip until Google figure out the new website, index their pages, recognize the link juice pass from old domain to a new domain.
I believe if you are doing PR and PPC to let people know about the new brand, in that case Google will soon figure out that the old brand has been shifted to new brand and allow the new brand to appear in search results when someone search for old brand name.
Again, what activities you have mentioned are great but there will be a dip so you have to take in to consideration and act accordingly.
Hope this helps!
-
Make the new site kickass better. That's why you are doing all of this, right?
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Disavow links old links
We have built a lot of sites and there a few sites we no longer manage or want any association with. When I have looked at webmasters I can see 20 to 200+ odd links back to our site. The page however at source has no reference to our website. I have searched the code but there isn't anything. Is it safe to disavow these or just leave them?
Technical SEO | | Cocoonfxmedia0 -
Best use of an old domain?
I've discovered that my clients website used to have another domain name, which they still own but don't use. It's doing OK considering its not been used for a few years - almost 6,000 backlinks showing on Majestic. So what's the best way of using this for SEO? I'm presuming some kind of redirecting? A simple redirect of everything on the domain to the new domain index page? Or going trough all the old pages and redirecting them one by one?
Technical SEO | | abisti20 -
What are some best practices for optimizing alternate versions of a brand name?
What are the best methods for ensuring that the correct spelling/formatting of a brand name rank in the SERP when an alternate formatting/spelling of the brand name is searched. Take for example the brand name (made up for example purposes), "SuperFry". Many customers search using the term "Super Fry" (with a space). To make things worse, not only does Google not return the brand name SuperFry, but it also auto corrects to another brand name "Super-Fri". Is there a common best practice to ensure the customer finds the intended brand name when they simply add a space in the search term? I assume a quick fix would be to create an ad words campaign for the alternate spellings/formatting. What about an organic solution? Perhaps we could create a special page talking about the alternate ways to spell the brand name? Would this solution send mixed signals to Google and potential hurt the over all rankings? Thanks much for any advice!
Technical SEO | | Vspeed0 -
My blog homepage deindexed, other pages indexing, still traffic not changed.
Hello! Today when I check my blog site search on Google, I can't see my blog home page. Though all my posts and pages are still on the Google results. Today I published a test post, then it also indexed by the Google less than 3 minutes. Still I can't see any traffic changes. 10th of April (yesterday) when I perform a site search (site:mydomain.com), I saw my site on the Google search result. Today I installed the Ulitmate SEO plug-in and deactivated WordPress SEO plug-in. After a few hours I saw this issue. (I'm not saying this is the issue, I just mentioned it). In addition to that I never used any black hat SEO methods to improve my ranking. my site:- http://goo.gl/6mvQT Any help really appreciate!
Technical SEO | | Godad0 -
I have altered a url as it was too long. Do I need to do a 301 redirect for the old url?
Crawl diagnostics has shown a url that is too long on one of our sites. I have altered it to make it shorter. Do I now need to do a 301 redirect from the old url? I have altered a url previously and the old url now goes to the home page - can't understand why. Anyone know what is best practice here? Thanks
Technical SEO | | kingwheelie0 -
Moving Old Site to New
Dear SEO Gurus, I have been working on #2 site for a couple of months and I think it is a good idea to redirect #1 (old site) to #2 (new site) below, yes? What is the most effective way of doing this? Do I have to 301 Redirect one page from the old site to a relevant page on the new site and do this for every page.... or can I do a 301 redirect for the whole old site to the new site? Thank you for your time in advance for helping me out! Sheryl | | 1 | Gazpachos - Restaurnte Y CantinaExplore http://www.gazpachorestaurant.com/ |
Technical SEO | | TOMMarketingLtd.
| 2 | Gazpacho's RestaurantExplore http://www.restaurantsdurango.com/ | Page Authority | Page Linking Root Domains | Domain Authority | Root Domain Linking Root Domains |
| 42 | Check_big_gray 36 | 30 | 37 |
| 21 | 1 | 6 | 1 |0 -
Site Structure Still Old
Ok after my first SEO report from seomoz I re-structured one of my sites. I basically split it into two different sites. I did this way before it was re-crawled on 5/1 and the results still show pages that no longer exist on that domain. What is causing this (user error I am sure but I just need to know what I can do to fix it).
Technical SEO | | bobbabuoy0